110 WAYS OF THE SIX-FOOTED 



four feet wide and two hundred feet deep, and with no 

 tools except his hands with which to remove the earth. 

 The tunnel of the Ceratina is about one-eighth of an 

 inch in diameter, and often as much as eight or ten 

 inches in depth. But when our little bee is through 

 excavating her tunnel and has finished it with all the 

 nicety prompted by her own fine sense of the fitness of 

 things, she has really but begun her summer's work. 

 Her next task combines pleasure and duty, for it takes 

 her into the fields to gather pollen from the flowers. 

 This she carries little by little to the tunnel ; but it 

 requires many trips back and forth before she has 

 packed the bottom of the nest with pollen to the depth 

 of a quarter of an inch. This done she deposits upon it 

 a tiny white egg; and then she proceeds to build a 

 partition above by gluing together bits of pith and 

 other suitable material with a glue which she always 

 keeps on hand, or rather in mouth, for the purpose. 

 This partition is fastened firmly to the sides of the 

 tunnel and is about one-tenth of an inch thick; it 

 serves as a roof for the first cell and as a floor for the 

 next. Then the process is repeated ; she gathers more 

 pollen, lays another egg, builds another partition, and so 

 on, until the tunnel is filled to within an inch or so of 

 the opening ; the last egg is thus necessarily deposited 

 many days after the first one. 



